ZURICH, Oct. 8, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced the latest version of the SAP® Commodity Management solution, an integrated offering designed to help enterprises protect and increase profit margins as they buy or sell commodities and manage overall commodity risk. The announcement was made at the global launch event for SAP Commodity Management, held October 8 in Zurich, Switzerland.

The recent volatility in commodity prices has outpaced worldwide financial volatility. With increasing global demand and continuing unpredictability, industries such as consumer products, mining and metals, oil and gas, chemicals, automotive and high tech need better ways to defend against potential financial damage that commodity price uncertainty causes. SAP Commodity Management is available with enhancement package 7 for the SAP® ERP application and is powered by the SAP HANA® platform. It offers a single platform that can help companies analyze, understand and mitigate commodity risks, contributing to more predictable business results that can provide:

Powerful analytics and real-time commodity position reporting across multiple business units

Support for complex commodity pricing rules for physical purchases and sales

More efficient execution of hedging strategies

Functionality designed to help handle integrated accounting and settlement processes of physical and financial commodity transactions

"Litasco has chosen SAP to establish a stable, reliable and secure information environment to manage the company's commodity operations as an integral part of our existing SAP system landscape," said Nikita Kochetkov, director of Accounting, Taxes and Treasury, LITASCO SA. "We appreciate SAP's continued investment into this market and rely on further valuable interaction with SAP for the commodity management solution."

SAP Commodity Management Delivers Results Across IndustriesWhether a company produces commodities for sale into the global market, purchases commodities to convert them into semi-finished products or buys commodities to manufacture consumer goods, commodity management software from SAP will be able to help organizations across many industries improve transparency in their risk positions.

Mining companies can use SAP Commodity Management to better manage the sales process of raw materials against complex, index-based pricing rules and to help assess and hedge their risk positions from the physical sales business.

Metal companies will be able to use the solution to help buy in metal commodities and to sell metal products with complex pricing rules, often index- and quality-based, as well as to better assess and hedge the price risk that arises from the net open physical long and short positions.

Consumer industries can deploy the solution to help handle complex buying processes for physical or contained commodities in the input materials for their manufacturing process, thus helping to assess and hedge the price risk from their forecasting and purchasing positions.

"Companies are dealing with increasingly volatile market prices and stringent regulations," said Anja Strothkamper, vice president, Line-of-Business Solutions for Commodity Management, SAP. "Sitting back and thinking these situations are beyond control will put companies' profitability and competitiveness at risk. SAP Commodity Management gives companies a more comprehensive view of risk across lines of businesses so they can react quickly to market changes and situations. With SAP, companies are empowered to protect and increase their profit margins as they buy or sell commodities while managing overall risk."

About SAPAs market leader in enterprise application software, SAP (NYSE: SAP) helps companies of all sizes and industries run better. From back office to boardroom, warehouse to storefront, desktop to mobile device – SAP empowers people and organizations to work together more efficiently and use business insight more effectively to stay ahead of the competition. SAP applications and services enable more than 248,500 customers to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and grow sustainably. For more information, visit www.sap.com.

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